After Trump, whither ATS?

a reply to: Astyanax
Personally, I don't think it's a question of members not having "stomach for discussing the future of the site", it's more a question of why, as discussing it is irrelevant regarding what will happen in the future.

Why I think it's irrelevant? Because ATS is the result of what people post on any specific day, so what happened yesterday will dictate what people discuss today.

I agree that politics is the main topic on ATS (and has been for some years), but that's just because that's what people want to talk about. Will it remain the main topic? I'm sure it will, as I don't think the political situation in the US, the country of origin of most ATS members, is going to change in the near future, as divisions are easier to spread and take longer to "cure" than unity, so politics will always be a source of discussion.

People react to what happens around them and from what affects them the most, and, for better or worse, a country's government affects the life of all it's citizens and, according to the "weight" of that country in the world, it also affects the life of people in other countries.

It's more or less what is happening with many companies around the world during this CoViD-19 pandemic, they diversify the products and services they sell because the demand has changed, with companies that, for example, sold computer parts, now also selling masks and disinfectant. Will those companies close when this crisis is over? No, they will return to what they did before, and, if things in the US return to a more "normal" state regarding politics (which I doubt will happen in the next few years, as a people divided is easier to control) so will people will be back to the more alternative topics (I'm not considering political conspiracies as alternative topics).

As a kind of PS, I love statistics, so I am always trying to look for data on how people use ATS, and, based on the number of new posts in each forum, I could see that the most active forums in the period from July 2019 to July 2020 were the political related forums, with the Political Mud Pit being the most active forum. If we look at the 2012-2013 period, the most active forum was... US Political Madness, so even the people were more interested in politics.
The alternative topics forum most active in 2012-2013 was the Aliens & UFOs forum, and it was the fourth most active forum. In the 2019-2020 period the Aliens & UFOs forum was still the most active alternative forum, but in fifth.
Another non-alternative forum that had an increase in popularity was the Social Issues and Civil Unrest
forum, that from eighth in 2012-2013 "climbed" to fourth in 2019-2020, overtaking the Aliens & UFOs forum, so, although people are still interested in alternative topics, everyday life appears to be more of a worry than it was some years ago.

In conclusion, as long as people like to discuss things with each other I don't think places like ATS will disappear. Yes, the main topics may change as the world around us changes, but people don't change that much, so I don't see a great difference in the coming years, only differences in personal views.